• What is your breakeven point? The point at which unit sales equal operating costs—the breakeven point—is perhaps the most important operational factor for a new venture or spin off because it identifies the moment at which the business begins to make money. While financial projections of a prospective business are often just educated guesses, your audience will be looking for some indication of when they can expect a return on investment.

• How will you source supplies? What are the raw materials necessary to create your finished item? How much do they cost, who are your suppliers, where are they located, and why did you choose them?

• What is your manufacturing or distribution process? How will you transfer information and data? How can your business benefit from technological improvements in manufacturing? Are you able to organize your distribution systems in a low-cost way?

• Where is your business based? Have you chosen a favorable geographic location? Does your location offer proximity to customers or suppliers? Do the businesses located near you complement your offering or compete with it? Also, what is your office like? You might include a physical description of the site with pictures, layouts, or drawings of the location in the supporting document section of your business plan.

• Who will work for you? Do you have access to skilled employees? For instance, can you offer internships to recent college graduates who would provide the company with inexpensive labor in the present and experienced candidates to draw from for future positions? Is your labor pool stable? For example, are workers attached to the region and have they tended to remain there even during economic downturns? Are your prospective workers well equipped and do they have the educational backgrounds that your company needs? Or can you provide in-house training to ensure you have the expertise you need?

• Concentrate on the opportunity. What is the specific customer problem that your product or service solves? For example, you may be fixing a weakness in the competitors’ services by offering product guarantees that aren’t available elsewhere. Or perhaps you have a way to make diet soft drinks taste like their high-sugar counter parts. As you develop particular marketing strategies, consider the opportunity from the perspective of the customer: Does the product or service you’re proposing make their lives better?

• Focus on customers’ buying behavior. When, where, why, and how do consumers buy your product or service? What needs does it fulfill for them? What are your customers’ priorities? What factors are important to them in choosing this type of product or service? Is it price? Quality? Value? Other benefits? For example, for time-pressed customers, service and convenience may trump price.

• Determine each customer’s value to your business. Weighing the cost to acquire a customer against the long-term value of that customer helps you decide which marketing strategies are most appropriate. Do customers often buy your product as a consumable, such as lipstick or a notebook? Are you building an annuity business, such as a movie streaming subscription service that continues for years? Or are you selling a durable product that is purchased only occasionally during a lifetime, such as a washing machine or a car? Do you need to build brand loyalty, or is your product/service the only one that will fill customers’ needs? Is the process of buying the product/service relationship oriented (like a loyalty program where you learn customer preferences and make suggestions about other items of interest)? Or is it transaction oriented (where you have limited communication with your customer and focus instead on efficiency or speed, such as a self-service kiosk at an airport terminal)?

• Review your own objectives. At what level of sales will you reach the breakeven point, and when do you anticipate achieving that level? After that, how long will it take to reach the next sales milestone? For example, you might intend to reach the breakeven six months after your initial sales, then increase sales by 10% per year, and then capture 10% of the target market in five years. What strategies can you design to fulfill these objectives?

• Product and/or service: Describe your product or service’s form, functionality, special features, and architecture. How does it uniquely meet your target market’s needs? What is your intellectual property, and how are you protecting it? What is your product development plan?

• Price: At what price point will you offer your product or service? Will there be an established price, or will it be tiered or variable depending on consumer demand? It’s extremely difficult to guess how much people will pay for something, but a business plan must demonstrate that you have carefully considered your new venture’s pricing scheme. Your pricing decisions depend on two factors: first, the price sensitivity of your market and the market’s perceived value of your product; and second, your total costs and required profit margin. Bear in mind that you may be able to adjust pricing to the needs of individual market segments or match high prices with unique service features.

• Place (distribution): How will your product be transported to the end user? What distribution channels will you use? How will you merchandise your product—in what kind of retail stores or locations? These decisions depend on the type of product, the costs of distribution, and customers’ needs or demands.

• Promotion: How will you communicate with consumers and make them aware of your product? Depending on your available resources and your target audience, you’ll need to select the right mix of approaches. Will you use word of mouth? (Satisfied customers singing your praises are a cheap, effective promotion, but unpredictable and difficult to control—especially if the message turns negative.) Will you opt for sales promotions? (These might include relatively low-cost ways to reach a large number of customers via coupons, samples, and demonstrations.) Do direct sales make the most sense? (These pricier tactics range from individual sales calls to mass telemarketing and broadcast e-mailing.) Or is traditional advertising a better bet? (Paid persuasive messages, such as television commercials and print ads, tend to be expensive, but the payoff is a strong brand image and brand loyalty.)